Observations & rants from the left,
and I don't care if you're offended.

05 May 2004

Is there a lesson to be learned somewhere in here?

On March 4th the .::Economic Policy Institute::. published findings that show higher education will not save you from losing your job or finding another one, contrary to what cheerleaders of this BUSHED economy are saying. The unemployment rate for college graduates is higher than that for high school dropouts.

College graduates represent 15.3% of total unemployment, but 19.1% of long-term unemployment. Long-term unemployment among college-educated workers increased by 299.4% between 2000 and 2003, a much faster rate than the increase of 156.1% for workers with a high school degree or less.

While long-term unemployment hit all age and occupational groups, more experienced jobless workers had a disproportionately difficult time getting back to work in 2003. Although job seekers age 45 and older made up 25.7% of the total unemployed population, the rate of long-term unemployment for this group was 35.4%.

"Sometimes it's better to trade economic efficiency for values like fairness and equity; that strengthening the hand of labor instead of sucking up to capital can be more economically beneficial in the long term, for Americans as much as Indians (who after all might soon surrender their newfound bounty to cheaper English-speaking workers in the nearby Philippines)—until then, maybe it's time to outsource them for another." .::full story::.

The .::Hull House Report::.  Minding the Gap: An Assessment of Racial Disparity in Metropolitan Chicago reaffirms other studies regarding disparities in the judicial system and the war on drugs.

"Whites are 125% more likely to use marijuana than Blacks; 181% more likely to use cocaine; 431% more likely to use inhalants; 516% more likely to use LSD. And yet Blacks account for 79% of all drug arrests."

Reports cited in quite a few papers reveal that employees from private contractors .::CACI International::. and .::Titan::. were interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Sewell Chan (The Washington Post) .::said::., the contractors are "at the center of the probe" into the abuse / humiliation / torture of Iraqi prisoners.

Civilians cannot be court-martialed and are not accountable. So, why are military functions being privatized? Is it money? Is someone trying to set a pattern (a precedent) for future wars, in which private armies are loyal only to them?

02 May 2004

You Didn't Expect This?

The recent revelations that American and British soldiers have .::abused::. detained Iraqis shouldn't be surprising. In fact, it should have been expected.

In the direct aftermath of the terrorist attack on the US, there were very public statements made by US officials explaining the usefulness of torture, and we eventually began .::shipping individuals::. we detained to countries that practice it. In conversations and debates during the build-up to the illegal invasion, many Americans dehumanized Iraqis, and all other people who weren't American or didn't support our plans to invade the sovereign nation. Reports of abuse at .::Guantanamo::. don't make mainstream news often, but they are there, like the stench of rotting garbage that everyone pretends not to smell so they won't be responsible for taking it out. After the assassination of two Hamas leaders by Ariel Sharon, even .::Howard Dean supported::. the murders.

The fish rots from the head down!

The barbarity of our leaders was manifested in the behavior of the soldiers. The rage and latent racism of the average American (.::including US soldiers::.) was fostered by a misadministration that specializes in deceit, because of its own bigotry and delusions of devine inspiration.

All it took to turn fresh-faced, patriotic troops into sadistic savages were instructions from .::Pentagon-hired mercenaries::. trained in the fine art of torture & abuse. Voila! The liberators supplant Saddam's brutality with their own.